Strip every Markdown mark and keep the words
Processed in your browser. Nothing is uploaded. Updated on 24 Oct 2026.Sometimes the marks are the problem: a README pasted into an email arrives full of asterisks, and a note written in Markdown reads badly anywhere that does not render it. This takes a .md file and gives back the words. Headings become ordinary lines, emphasis disappears, list items keep a dash so a list still reads as one, and each link keeps its text with the address in brackets after it.
Drop the Markdown file onto the page; Convert to is already set to Plain text.
Press Convert to plain text to strip the #, * and link syntax.
Read the clean text in the Result pane.
Press Copy, or Download .txt to save it.
Drop a document and the tool reads its first bytes to work out what it really is, rather than trusting the name on the end of it. If the two disagree it says so once and carries on with the truth. Then it offers the conversion you almost certainly came for as a single button, with what that conversion costs written out above it, before you press anything.
It covers the pairs a browser can do properly. Markdown becomes HTML, plain text or a PDF. HTML becomes Markdown, plain text or a PDF. A Word .docx becomes HTML, Markdown or plain text. A PDF gives up its text as plain text, Markdown or HTML. A plain text file becomes a PDF, an HTML page or Markdown. An RTF gives up its words.
It also refuses, in plain words, the pairs it would do badly. A .docx going to PDF is sent to Word to PDF, which lays the document out on a real page and shows you page one first. A PDF going to Word is sent to PDF to Word, which reads the sizes and positions in the file to rebuild headings and lists. For PDF to Markdown or HTML, headings and lists are worked out the same way and the page says so before it runs; switch that off for plain paragraphs.
The rest of the article, and all 6 questions about Document Converter, are on the Document Converter page.
Markdown to HTML, plain text or PDF. HTML to Markdown, plain text or PDF. Word (.docx) to HTML, Markdown or plain text. PDF to plain text, Markdown or HTML. Plain text to PDF, HTML or Markdown. RTF to plain text. Each pair has its own page with its own explanation of what it keeps and what it drops.
No. Reading the .docx, extracting the PDF text, rendering the Markdown and writing the new file all happen in the page you have open. Nothing is sent to a server and nothing is stored, so a contract, a medical letter or an unpublished draft never leaves your device.
A4, Letter or Legal pages with one inch margins, set in Helvetica at the body size you pick, black on white. Headings, paragraphs, lists and simple tables come across. Images are dropped, a link becomes its words with the address in brackets, and Helvetica covers Latin letters only, so other scripts and emoji come out as a question mark. All of that is on screen before you press the button.
A scan is a photograph of a document, not a document. There is no text inside the file to extract, so there is nothing to convert. Reading it needs optical character recognition, which is a different job; the tool says so rather than handing you an empty file.
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Same job, other tools: CSV Remove Duplicates – Drop repeated lines from a CSV export without breaking quoted fields or the header · Remove Duplicate Emails from a List – Keep one row per email address in a mailing list, ignoring case and stray spaces · EPUB to Markdown – Turn an e-book into Markdown with its headings, italics, bold and lists kept.
On the related tools: VCF to Excel – Open phone contacts in Excel, one row per contact, each number in its own column.
In the collections File Converter · Office File Tools.